Jeff Gordon highlights PepsiCo community luncheon

PepsiCo makes it a practice to throw in a surprise at its annual shareholders meetings in New Bern, and on Tuesday, the surprise was stock car racer Jeff Gordon.

Randy Foster, Sun Journal Staff

PepsiCo makes it a practice to throw in a surprise at its annual shareholders meetings in New Bern, and on Tuesday, the surprise was stock car racer Jeff Gordon.

Gordon, who lists Pepsi-Cola among his sponsors, has appeared in a couple of viral videos for Pepsi Max in which he takes unsuspecting passengers on wild rides through urban settings.

In the first video, he poses as a car buyer, with the prank pulled on a car salesman. In the second video, he poses as a taxi driver, with the prank pulled on car writer Travis Okulski of jalopnik.com, who had questioned the authenticity of the first video.

Gordon’s appearance in New Bern on Tuesday was itself a big surprise. PepsiCo Americas Beverages CEO Al Carey, during his comments, listed the company’s better performing products and segued into the viral videos, hinting that Gordon himself might make an appearance. There were even two empty director chairs to one side of the stage.

But Carey then introduced the mastermind behind the campaign, Lou Arbetter, the company’s director of brand marketing. The two took their seats, and the audience experienced a bit of a letdown.

The letdown was temporary, when a third chair was brought to the stage with Gordon right behind it.

More than 500 people who turned out to Tuesday’s invitation-only New Bern Community Luncheon at New Bern Riverfront Convention Center gave Gordon a standing ovation.

After a showing of the second video (the first was shown at last year’s luncheon), a giddy audience peppered Gordon with questions. One woman even talked Gordon into letting her get on stage with him for a picture to prove to her students that she saw him.

Gordon confessed that he didn’t do all of the driving in the first video.

“This time I got to do all of the driving,” he said of the second video.

The car was not a typical taxi, but a Chevrolet Caprice (Chevy is also one of Gordon’s sponsors) configured as a police pursuit car, but painted like a taxi.

The prank starts at a hotel where Gordon, disguised as a tattooed parolee, picks up Okulski. A short distance later, the taxi is stopped by a state trooper. Hilarity ensues.

“There was a lot of risk involved,” Gordon said, since the prank started on public streets. “At one point, we needed to get to a closed course.”

That closed course was an old brick yard, and the chase ends with the reveal, inside a garage decorated with Pepsi banners.

“It was like winning the Daytona 500,” Gordon said.

This is the third straight year that PepsiCo has held its annual shareholders meetings in New Bern, where Pepsi-Cola was invented as “Brad’s Drink” by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in 1893 and renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898.

Though PepsiCo is now headquartered in Purchase, N.Y., it started holding its shareholders meetings in New Bern in 2012 and, last year, announced the meetings would be held in New Bern annually.

In addition to its soft drinks, PepsiCo also owns Lays, Tropicana, Quaker and Gatorade brands.

Minges Bottling Group, a family-owned company based in Ayden in Pitt County, has owned the Pepsi bottling franchise that includes New Bern since 1935.

The pharmacy where Bradham invented his drink is located at the corner of Pollock and Middle streets in New Bern. Sabrina Bengel, the managing partner, operates the site as The Pepsi Store and The Birthplace of Pepsi-Cola.

Randy Foster can be reached at 252-635-5663 or randy.foster@newbernsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @rivereditor.

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